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365 Days of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not meant to be celebrated just once a year. In fact, families, couples, parents and others who intentionally express gratitude and appreciation to each other regularly enjoy the closest, most pleasurable relationships. Expressing sincere, specific appreciations to the people who are most important in your life boosts self-worth, self-esteem, goodwill, and creates a strong foundation for intimacy.

Youngsters are especially drawn to environments where they feel appreciated. Making sure children regularly get acknowledged at home is important to helping them resist dangerous peer pressures away from the family.

Couples also do better in relationships where sharing appreciations is a natural part of their regular interactions.

PAIRS Daily Temperature Reading, featured earlier this month in TIME Magazine’s, “Honey, Can You Hear Me Now,” is the most effective skill couples learn in relationship and marriage education classes to take care of relationships that matter.

As you’re preparing your Thanksgiving table and home to welcome loved ones, keep in mind that sharing appreciations, on Thanksgiving and throughout the year, will help keep your family strong, connected, and ready to make the most of life’s challenges and opportunities.

President Barack Obama’s 2009 Thanksgiving message captured the spirit of the holiday as he spoke about giving “thanks for our families and our loved ones” and the special importance of recognizing soldiers who are far from home and family during the holidays. The President’s 2010 Thanksgiving Day message is expected to be available on whitehouse.gov before the holiday begins.

President Obama’s Thanksgiving Message (2009)

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.

American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.

Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.

So tomorrow, I’ll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.

But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.

The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.

We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.

So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.

It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.

In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.

You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.

So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.

With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,

1 Response

From my blogpost on 11/20/10
hopemattersmarriage.blogspot.com
I sit here today contemplating the holidays coming upon us, and am excited to experience these for another year. But as I sit here, I reflect back to when my girls (twins, by the way, and now 22) were in 7th grade. Every year, up until then, I had great intentions of making the holidays a special time and enjoying all the cooking and baking. But the stress of it all grabbed me by the throat yet one more time that year. Earlier in the week I had done all the grocery shopping with a smile on my face. By Thanksgiving Day I was all stressed out, the embers of anger igniting as the day progressed. I was ruining the day, AGAIN, for my family….” Nobody is helping me, again!!”, I internally smoldered. It was this day that changed my life and outlook on what is important during the holidays, forever.

That day I was hit over the head! My girls came up to me and asked if they could help. I mumbled something, but didn’t give them an answer. I was sulking, thinking they were all having a good time, and I was doing all the work. After all, I got up so early to put the turkey in! They tried again, and I impatiently gave them something to do like set the table, mix the green bean casserole or get the water glasses. Well this time, they confronted me……and said “Mom, do you ever just have fun and laugh during the holidays?”. I fell to my knees, tears welled up in my eyes. It hit me, HARD. I was focused on all the wrong stuff? Could I have a different attitude and spirit about all of this? Why did it have to be so stressful? It didn’t……and it was me, the one who deep down always wanted to create the warmth of a home.

That Thanksgiving Day was different……my heart changed. I realized what was important. And it was not my “to do list”. It was the deeper things…..like family, enjoying a cup of coffee together, cooking together and enjoying the blessings in our lives.

The next day I went out and bought three aprons from Anthropoligie for both girls and myself. We wear them every year! This year our newly married one will bring her special dishes from her home and wear her special apron when she gets here.

Happy Thanksgiving……remember what to focus on………the food will be fine, and the table perfect.